blog tour

It’s been a month in the making … but the time has FINALLY arrived!!! Beginning tomorrow I start on my a whirlwind tour of frivolity, fun, and just general trouble making across the Internet. 14 days. 13 stops. Random prizes. One Grand Prize of a $25 Gift Card, three signed print books, book bag, t-shirt, and general “Nina” stuff for one lucky commenter across all blog stops.

Yep, it’s a marketing free-for-all for A TOUCH OF LILLY. There will be interviews and excerpts, reviews and some interesting insights into me (scary place, this brain of mine LOL!). I hope you can join me!

I’m a little homesick. I’ve spent this week bumping around the blogosphere visiting with other authors and chatting about Maid for Master. But even I’m a little tired and looking for a break. I’ve got three more stops. Check THIS POST and find out what stops I have left. This coming Wednesday I’ll choose a person at random from all those who commented on the various blog posts to win a box full of goodies including my book Healer’s Garden.

On the writing front I’ve had a really good week. I did shoot something off to my editor at Ellora’s Cave and should be hearing something in a few weeks. In the mean time my muse and I have come to an understanding. She understands I NEED her to stay put and play with me and I’ve come to understand she needs more hot showers, space heaters, and wine to survive this crazy-cold and snowy month. The bribes seem to be working. We’ve been a finely tuned machine this week cranky out the words. (Let’s hope we can keep up that New Year’s resolution through the end of the month.)

On a personal front … I am jumping up and down and screaming with joy. Most of you know I have multiple sclerosis. I can walk around my home, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to get around malls or hotels. For years, and I do mean years, my neurologist and I have been trying to convince my insurance company that a motorized wheelchair would improve my life significantly. Finally, FINALLY a chair arrived at my door step on Friday. There’s still the question of how we’re going to transport it, but expect to see me and my sexy new wheels and writer’s conferences this year. I CAN NOT wait. It’ll save me from all kinds of difficulties that have kept me home. Yay!

I’d like to welcome guest RACHEL HAIMOWITZ. Rachel has just begun a blog tour for her newest Release Anchored. Welcome!

I’ve always been fascinated by barely-alternate alternate universes in stories. Secret vampires running detective agencies in modern LA, secret dog shifters owning bars, secret succubae who don’t know what they are but accidently eat people’s chi on occasion . . . and yes, yes I do watch too much paranormal TV, why do you ask?* Stories where the world isn’t so fundamentally different from our own, where just one small thing is different (well, okay, maybe a big thing, but small on a quantum scale), birth some fascinating contrasts at the crossroads.

Stephen King is a master of the barely-AU, and long one of my idols in that regard. From The Stand to the epic Dark Tower series, everything he touched was just a little sideways. Stargate has done some great work with it too, whether through the quantum mirror or a rift in space-time. And let’s face it, it would have been hot to see McKay make out with Rod.

But I digress. After twenty-odd years of watching and reading the masters of the barely-AU, I knew I wanted to try one myself. But I didn’t give it much thought until one spring when I found myself in the middle of a busy newsroom floor at a 24-hour cable news channel. I was working fourteen-hour days logging tape, doing research, and running scripts for an evening broadcast. Our anchor was hosting a big panel one night on, of all things, the Aqua-Teen Hunger Force Lite-Brite bomb scare in Boston. (I. Shit. You. Not.) They needed extra make-up artists to get all the guests ready on time. Zaula Pahn’s** (remember her? Don’t worry, neither does anyone else) makeup artist was sitting in her little work-room right off our news floor, chewing gum and reading a magazine. I was sent to fetch her. “Sorry,” she said. “I only touch Zaula Pahn.”

Well, if all that wasn’t me stepping through a barely-AU portal into a New York where Lite-Brites shaped like cartoon characters shut down entire cities and makeup artists were salaried to work for 30 minutes a day, I don’t know what was.

So, with TV news swallowing my life, and the idea of the barely-AU having crawled and nested firmly back in my brain, I sat down to write Anchored, a barely-AU set in modern Manhattan and starring a slave news anchor owned by his network. TV news staff often work 80-hour weeks anyway, and Zaula Pahn already seemed to own her makeup artist; it was hardly a stretch.

Forming the Anchored world—one with iPhones and gluten-free bagels and copies of The Economist and also, oh yeah, institutionalized slavery all around the globe—was some of the best fun I’ve had at work in a good long while. I finally got to write my barely-AU, and I didn’t even need to whip out a bunch of goatees to do it.

BLURB:
Network news anchor Daniel Halstrom is at the top of his field, but being at the bottom of the social ladder—being a slave—makes that hard to enjoy. Especially when NewWorld Media, the company who’s owned him since childhood, decides to lease him on evenings and weekends to boost their flagging profits.

Daniel’s not stupid; he knows there’s only one reason a man would pay so much for what little free time he has, and it’s got nothing to do with his knowledge of current events. But he’s never been made to serve like that before, and he fears he won’t survive the experience with his sanity intact.

He finds himself in the home of Carl Whitman, a talk show host whose words fail him time and again when it comes to ordering Daniel to bed. Daniel knows what Carl wants, but it seems as if Carl isn’t willing to take it, and Daniel’s not willing to give it freely. His recalcitrance costs him dearly, but with patience and some hard-won understanding, love just might flourish where once there’d been only fear and pain. Can Carl become the anchor in Daniel’s turbulent life, or will he end up the weight that sinks his slave for good?

***GIVEAWAYS ***Rachel will be giving away…
* 1 ebook copy of Counterpoint: Book I of Song of the FallenOR of Sublime: Collected Shorts (winner’s choice).
* 1 swag pack featuring cover art from Anchored and my other works.
* 1 extra swag pack to the first commenter to name all three shows
referenced in the first paragraph of this post

And continue to follow RACHEL on the rest of her tour. And visit her blog on JANUARY 23 for your chance for more prizes.

I’m going to admit I spend all day on the computer, but do very little internet surfing. I have places I hang out, but I don’t have a regular route of blogs I visit. I find posts via other people who post the links on the loops I frequent. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t see some really good, thought provoking stuff. I just want to share with you some great places I’ve been this past week.

Like Maureen Johnson’s great post on social media and a call to authors who choose NOT to brand themselves. (Note: This blog was posted in the summer, but this is the first time I’ve seen it.) This approach isn’t for every author, but she makes some great points. Everyone is screaming for authors to get out there and market themselves on every social media platform available. Yes, I believe it’s important to market onesself, but I really like Ms. Johnson’s take on things.

Julia Barrett did a great three part series on “The Secret Success of Romance”. Unfortunately, the people who need to see this post aren’t the smart and talented readers and authors stopping by. It really needs to get out to the people out in the blogosphere who still believe the romance genre involves Neanderthal Dukes bullying women and virgin waifs who do nothing but simper and whine. It’s a great series. You should check it out and then repost it … perhaps it will go viral and help educate the masses who wouldn’t pick up a “bodice ripper” novel if their life depended on it.

And this shout out goes to a good friend, Constance Ruth Clark whose debut release is coming out in May 2011 from Lyrical Press. She’s been blogging for awhile and now is on bed rest for a couple of weeks. Why don’t you head on over there and show her some comment love, she could use the company.

Of course I’ve got internet surfing on the brain as I’m gearing up for a two week blog tour (which is kind of like a virtually book signing without the fur of having cookies and coffee) to promote “Maid for Master“. Here’s the schedule: